Push to talk server open source

FBI Director James Comey said in a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that he treated the bureau’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server and its investigation into President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia “consistently,” and “under the same principles.” Comey was grilled by the committee’s Democrats about why he decided announce, 11 days before the 2016 election, that the FBI was revisiting the Clinton email investigation but did not reveal that the FBI had also been investigating possible collusion between Trump associates and Russia. “Americans across the country have been confused and disappointed by your judgment in handling the investigation into Secretary Clinton’s emails,” Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy told Comey on Wednesday. “On a number of occasions, you told us to comment directly and extensively on that investigation. You even released internal FBI … [Read more...] about Comey successfully dodged the biggest question looming over the Trump-Russia probe

Some of President Donald Trump’s right-wing media allies have sought to question whether any potential collusion between the campaign and Russia would be against the law. Fox News host Sean Hannity was among the latest to raise the question. Experts pushed back on the assertion that collusion would not be considered a violation. A new right-wing media talking point has taken shape in recent days as special counsel Robert Mueller investigates Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and whether President Donald Trump’s campaign had anything to do with it: that even if anyone on the campaign did collude with Moscow, it would not technically be illegal. The liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America has been documenting the evolution of this argument since Fox’s Geraldo Rivera first brought it up in mid-May. “What is the crime?” Rivera said May 10 during an appearance on Sean Hannity’s show. … [Read more...] about ‘Collusion is not a crime’: Trump’s media allies have a striking new talking point that experts say is ‘flawed’ and ‘absurd’

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal project for 2016 has been to build an artificially intelligent, voice-controlled assistant for his home. Now that he’s finished the first version of his own “Iron Man”-inspired Jarvis, he’s considering giving away the code he created. In a lengthy Facebook post on Monday, Zuckerberg described how he went about creating his digital butler for his home in San Francisco. He spent a total of 100 hours building the assistant, which can control his lights and music and even make toast with a retrofitted toaster from the 1950s. “In some ways, this challenge was easier than I expected,” Zuckerberg wrote. “In fact, my running challenge (I also set out to run 365 miles in 2016) took more total time. But one aspect that was much more complicated than I expected was simply connecting and communicating with all of the different systems in my home.” Here are the main things … [Read more...] about Mark Zuckerberg built his own virtual assistant — here’s how it works

Today, Microsoft is announcing that it’s releasing PowerShell, its immensely popular tool for automating and managing Windows servers at large scales, to open source, complete with a version for the free Linux operating system. If you know Microsoft’s history, that’s a little surprising. As far back as Bill Gates’s “Open Letter to Hobbyists” in 1976, Microsoft has seen software as intellectual property and a commercial product to be sold. Linux, which uses the open source model by which anybody can view, modify, and contribute to the underlying source code, is the exact opposite of that model, and was considered a major threat to Microsoft Windows in the 1990s and 2000s. The new approach reflects of Microsoft’s revamped priorities under CEO Satya Nadella, and an acknowledgment at how popular Linux has become in corporate data centers. Microsoft has to embrace Linux because that’s what customers want, and it’s … [Read more...] about This 21-year Oracle veteran is now in charge of Microsoft’s most surprising initiative

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has reshaped the company since taking over two years ago . Windows is still important, but it’s no longer the only platform that matters: Microsoft is releasing software and supporting app development for Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, and even its old enemy Linux. The infighting and aggressive dismissal of competitors is mostly gone. And Nadella has embraced cloud computing – the idea that some customers don’t want to run their own technology but would prefer to outsource it – turning Microsoft into the clear No. 2 in the category after Amazon. We caught up with Nadella fresh off the company’s Build conference for developers last week in San Francisco and ahead of the new Envision conference for business leaders, which kicks off Monday in New Orleans. Edited for clarity and length. Matt Rosoff: There was a lot of talk last week at Build about chatbots and … [Read more...] about Satya Nadella on why you’ll love Cortana, how cars are like data centers, and what’s spurring all these global startups

When Facebook acquired the San Francisco-based LiveRail for a reported $400 million to $500 million in July 2014, the social network said the video ad-tech company would “help us make video advertising much better for everyone.” LiveRail was founded in 2007 and is known in the ad-tech industry as a video supply-side platform. It helped (and still helps) publishers like A+E Networks, Gannett, and Dailymotion make money from their videos by connecting them to advertisers via an automated bidding process. LiveRail helped the publishers sell their ad space to the highest bidder and provided analytics to help optimize the ads’ performance. The vision shared by Facebook and LiveRail hasn’t changed. But the product and the team certainly have in the 21 months since Facebook acquired the company. Here are just some of the most recent revisions:LiveRail Central, the real-time bidding marketplace Facebook inherited as part of the acquisition, has been … [Read more...] about Pullbacks, delays, ad fraud: The story of Facebook’s ‘$500 million’ LiveRail acquisition

In the two years since Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took the top spot, Microsoft has softened up its position toward technologies it used to want to see destroyed – most notably Linux, a free operating system that former CEO Steve Ballmer once referred to as a “cancer.” Most recently, Microsoft announced that SQL Server, its immensely lucrative database software, would be going beyond Windows and hitting Linux in 2017. James Niesewand, CEO of small gaming company and Microsoft partner Illyriad Games, says that his company has been a direct beneficiary of the new Microsoft philosophy, and yet the SQL Server news was still a big surprise. “That’s like a slap in the face, in a good way,” Niesewand says. “[It’s] a wake-up call.” At this week’s Microsoft Build conference, we’re going to hear a lot of the latest updates on that strategy, as the Redmond giant keeps pushing its kinder, gentler image. … [Read more...] about How Microsoft is giving its customers ‘a slap in the face, but in a good way’

We all know Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his top lieutenant, Sheryl Sandberg. Close company followers might know big product leaders like David Marcus and Chris Cox. But most of Facebook’s important executives fly under the radar. Here are the people shaking things up at the social network while leading some of its most important products and initiatives.Jan Koum joined Facebook through the massive $19 billion acquisition of his messaging platform WhatsApp. Ukranian-born Jan Koum grew up on food stamps after moving to the US at 16, but is now worth an estimated $7.7 billion, thanks largely to the WhatsApp acquisition. He and his cofounder, Brian Acton, both still work at WhatsApp, and Koum is the only employee other than Zuckerberg and Sandberg to serve on Facebook’s board of directors. Though he keeps a pretty low profile, he does announce all of the app’s milestones – including that it now has 900 million monthly active users – … [Read more...] about Power players: the most important Facebook execs you’ve never heard of